Advanced Uses of RSS

Lisa Rogers

ticTOCs and Gold Dust

About Me

• Research Associate at ICBL http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk

• ticTOCs http://www.tictocs.ac.uk

• Gold Dust http://www.hull.ac.uk/golddust

Use and Re-Use of RSS

• Viewed in RSS Reader/Browser– Individual Use

• Embedded into websites.– Others displaying your news on

their websites

• Machine to Machine Use– Used by service providers and

aggregators such as News Now, ticTOCs and Gold Dust.

Categories of RSS Feeds

• General Feeds– News, Blogs, Job Adverts,

Events, Website Updates, etc.

• More Specific Feeds– Journal Tables of Contents, Items

in Institutional Repositories, Learning Resources, Calls for Funding, Conference Announcements, Industry News, Calls for Papers, etc.

RSS Formats

• RSS 1.0– Uses RDF– Can be extended through use of

Modules DC, PRISM etc.– Provides more structured metadata

• RSS 2.0– Simple format– Generally used to provide textual

updates, news, blogs etc.

Journal Table of Contents

• Many Publishers are now providing RSS feeds for TOCs.

• Quality of data provided varies

• Little standardisation

ticTOCs

• JISC funded Project Piloting a current awareness service.

• Collection of over 11,000 Journal TOC RSS feeds from over 300 publishers

• Allows users to find feeds to export to their own reader or view in ticTOCs

• Will produce guidelines for publishers producing RSS feeds.

ticTOCs Demo

Guidelines for Publishers of TOCs

• Use RSS 1.0 specification • Use RSS 1.0 Modules (dc, prism)• Use well formed and valid XML files for your

TOC RSS feeds • Use the RSS Content Module to present

HTML marked up content.• Do not restrict access to TOC RSS feeds.• Produce regular static copies of RSS feeds for

fast downloading• Provide a choice of feeds (e.g current issue,

recent issues)• Provide up-to-date OPML files

Ideal TOC

Gold Dust

• JISC funded Research project investigating alerting users about items of interest based on usage of ticTOCs.

• Testing using 50 Engineers

• Push highly relevant items from other RSS feeds.

Gold Dust Diagram

The Future for ticTOCs

• Embedding ticTOCs into the research process

• Standardising TOC RSS feeds

• Increasing the number of TOC RSS feeds

The Future for Gold Dust

• Develop auto discovery and delivery services

• Explore possibility of similar service in domains other than engineering.

Any Questions?

Lisa Rogers

l.j.rogers@hw.ac.uk

http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~mthljr/